Senate looks at suicide on Indian reservations

[discocrisco01]

Source: AP

WASHINGTON—At 15, high school sophomore Coloradas Mangas knows all too much about suicide.

He's recently had several friends who took their own lives, and he survived a suicide attempt himself.

Coloradas, a member of the Chiricahua Apache tribe, lives on the Mescalero Apache Reservation in New Mexico, where there have been five youth suicides since the start of the school year. All were his friends.

Coloradas went to Capitol Hill Thursday to tell lawmakers about the urgent problem of suicide among Native Americans. Tribal suicide rates are 70 percent higher than for the general population, and the youth suicide rate is even higher. On some reservations youth suicide rates are 10 times the national average.

"Things go wrong that they can't change," Coloradas said, trying to explain the high rate of suicide in his community. "They don't get shown the love they need. They say, 'You don't love me when I was here. Now you love me when I'm not here.'


Read more: http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2010/03/25/senate_looks_at_suicide_on_indian_reservations/

[Happyhippychick]

1. Oh how sad, I had no idea.

[Spazito]

2. I hope this goes beyond "looking at" and into doing something...

This is certainly a first step, in the short term, imo:

"Dorgan said the Indian Health Care Improvement Act, approved as the part of the health care overhaul signed by President Barack Obama, would authorize a comprehensive youth suicide prevention effort on Indian reservations. The bill also boosts mental health resources throughout Indian Country."

This treats the symptoms but until the actual problems are addressed, imo, it will remain a 'band aid' solution.

[Delphinus]

3. It's not only this reservation,

it's happening at the one in South Dakota too. It seems nothing is being done for the First Peoples.

[GoCubsGo]

4. About fucking time.

This has been going on for DECADES. What the hell took so long? (That was a rhetorical question. I already know the answer.)

[SolidGold]

5. Native Americans should be outraged, not teabaggers

They're the one that lost their nation and we should all be in debt to them. It's fucking sickening that we've come this far and haven't done something. I mean for fuck sakes we let them drink and gamble their lives away.

[azul]

6. They need jobs and wives and family: a future.

I say let the interior department contract out the running of BLM, national parks and forests, etc. to native American groups/nations (businesses). There may be some long-denied justice and a possible future balance in it for everybody. Heck, gambling may be done in National Park reserves for maintenance revenue.

The irony that the US needs the indigenous people's wisdom and ethics to stabilize the country's ecosystem may well be the final defeat of American Expansionism.

[azul]

7. Guns facilitate suicide.

Of 400,000 suicide attempts in the US each year 30,000 are successful. Half of the 30,000 used guns.
#'s from The Hidden Brain p237-39 by Shankar Vedantam.

Just saying that this this may be a public health problem that is beyond the reach of public health institutions, and rational thought.